Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Here's a video from Dana Dahlquist with his student discussing angle of attack and the flat spot.

Some golfers may not understand the importance of the flat spot. I had first heard the 'flat spot' bandied about by Jim McLean in one of his books (I think it was The 8 Step Swing). IIRC, all McLean discussed was his belief that a flat spot existed and that you wanted to hit your driver on the flat spot.

It wasn't until recently that Chris Como and Dr. Sasho MacKenzie started to research the flat spot and found that it did exist and the longer the flat spot, the better. The long the flat spot it creates more speed due to creating more parametric acceleration. Furthermore, it makes the golfer more consistent and more accurate.

This is what I think was the real secret to Moe Norman's success. Watch this video of Moe hitting balls. At this point, Moe's eyesight is becoming an issue and he was grossly overweight and in his 60's.

Moe is still hitting the ball well, but you can see instances where his club head is hitting the turf further back, behind the ball. Yet...he still hits the ball well.

What we also know about Moe?

He was known for small divots or almost no divot. As Moe said 'bacon strips, not pork chops.'
Of course, some will dispute that Moe wasn't long. However, these people usually saw Moe when he was in his 50's and 60's and was out-of-shape. A few years ago I was told that Moe's driver weighed in at 465 grams. I've been known to have a heavy driver and at its heaviest mine weighed 337 grams.

Tuesday, August 2, 2016

Here's a couple of videos from Eric Jones discussing visualization in the golf swing. I've found that quality visualization has a far larger reaching impact on your performance than consciously thinking about swing mechanics.

It's not that swing mechanics are unimportant, but being able to sense and feel those swing mechanics BEFORE you make your swing is something that I have found enables me to execute those mechanics and perform better than when I consciously think about swing mechanics.

A long time ago I had read an article about Fred Couples. In the article they asked Fred how he hits a draw. He says he visualizes a draw in his pre-shot routine and he hits the draw. The same with a fade.

For years...I thought Couples was either goofing on the interviewer or was some surreal talent (well, he is that) that could make that work, but no ordinary human could reproduce that type of magic.

After understanding visualization better, I started to be able to do the same thing. Instead of thinking about mechanics to hit a draw on command, I would visualize the shot and sense the swing I needed to make to produce that shot BEFORE I swung the club and I started producing that shot on command.

What I have seen thus far is when I can really visualize the ball's flight trajectory and then visualize myself making the swing I want to make, that's when I hit pay dirt and golf becomes really easy for me. It's almost like an out-of-body experience of not only visualizing, but actually feeling the muscles, the balance of your body, etc. hitting the shot despite the fact that I'm standing behind the ball in my pre-shot routine.

Hall of Famer and arguably the greatest left hand pitcher of all time, Steve Carlton, was known to visualize himself getting into 'the zone' before a game and obviously it worked quite well for him. I hope to have more blog posts on this to come.

Monday, July 25, 2016

While this drill is simple, it actually serves quite a few different purposes.

A big part of the purpose of this drill is that it should help get a feel for eliminating actually thinking swing mechanics in the golf swing. Some swing mechanics thoughts can be very complicated like something you may see out of M.O.R.A.D. And some swing mechanics thoughts can be very simple like 'keep the head down' or 'keep the left arm straight.' Whatever swing mechanics thoughts you're using, the use of swing thoughts are often counterproductive in terms of performance.

I used to think that you had to have conscious swing thoughts to play golf. But after the past 2 years of utilizing slow motion practice and learning how to sense the swing instead of thinking about the swing while swinging, my mind has changed. And sometimes it's not so much a swing though as it is thinking about timing your swing.

Another great part of this drill is that it starts to pick up the tempo of the swing. If you want to gain distance off the tee, you really have to swing hard to do so. Again, I used to be about 'effortless power', but over the past few years I have come to believe that even the most effortless swings like Sam Snead likely felt like they were putting an immense amount of effort to do so. But between flexibility, their body dimensions and hand-eye coordination, they can make it look easy.